'Good,' said Crichton.
'If there is nothing else gentlemen?' Carew looked around him. No one spoke. 'Very well then. Shall we be about our business?'
FOUR
When they left the meeting, Jamieson told Clive Evans that he wanted to call in at the residency to pick up his briefcase before going on down to Microbiology. Evans said that he would accompany him and then show him the way.
'I've never seen anyone stand up to Mr Thelwell that way before,' Evans confided seriously as they crossed the cobbled yard to the blackened, stone building that served as the doctors' residency. Jamieson had not relished his first meeting with Thelwell. He had to admit that it had turned out to be even worse that he had feared but he was reluctant to enter into any conversation about Thelwell with another member of staff. He chose to ignore the comment, and looked up at a series of stone busts on ledges at the side of the entrance to the residency. Corrosion of the sandstone had eaten away at the cornice of the ledges and also at some of the lettering. It made the names and dates difficult to read but he managed to make out the citation to the main one. It said, John Thurlow Kerr, Professor of Medicine, 1881–1888.
'Our founder's bid for immortality,' said Evans.
Jamieson wondered for a moment why all busts and statues looked pretty much the same to him. What was the point of it all? What was he meant to think when he looked at a crumbling stone bust? He supposed that Evans had hit the nail on the head with his 'bid for immortality' comment. Pathetic, really.
He considered what the hospital must have been like in 1881 and how much pain and suffering these walls had seen and heard, how much human misery they had been witness to. If only they could talk, but maybe it was best not to hear. Had the public of the day had the same faith in their healers as they did today? The same blind faith. Had people looked on trustingly while leeches were applied to suck their blood under the 'learned' gaze of frock-coated sages, the medical gentlemen, the Thelwells of another age, men for whom self doubt was an alien concept?
Jamieson reflected on the history of his profession with little pleasure. Was there any other professional body so conservative in its outlook, so fiercely insular, so determined that outsiders be kept at bay? He doubted it and took little pride in the conclusion.
Jamieson looked at the stern, bearded face of John Thurlow Kerr and considered the state of medicine in the late nineteenth century. Surgery had meant the screams of the unanaesthetised and the near certainty of suppurating wound infection to follow. Childbirth had meant puerperal sepsis for so many women, a disease caused almost entirely by the medical profession itself who, in the ignorance of their age, had arrogantly strode between the post-mortem room and the maternity ward unwittingly spreading the infections that they subsequently sought to cure.
How many doctors of a later day acknowledged that fact when the role of bacteria in infection was finally understood? Not many he concluded. Humility was not an outstanding characteristic of medical practitioners. This was true the world over whether they be Harley Street physicians or African witch doctors. In their own way both sought to keep their patients in ignorance of their own bodies and determined to keep it that way in their own interests. Both peddled pills and potions and did so with a mystique cultivated to preserve their position in society. 'What will the penicillin do Doctor?' 'Fight the infection Mrs Brown.' But how many GPs knew what penicillin really did do? How many would know that it inhibited the final step in peptidoglycan cross linking in bacterial call wall synthesis? At a rough guess none out of a hundred. Jamieson knew because Jamieson wanted to know everything. But then, that was why he had been recommended to Sci-Med in the first place.
'Shan't be a moment,' Jamieson said to Evans and ran upstairs to collect his briefcase. He paused in the room for a moment to adjust the bandage on his left hand which was threatening to come adrift. As he re-tied it he reflected on what he had learned at the meeting. 'Difficult' wasn't the word for a man like Thelwell. He was a twenty-four carat son of a bitch with no saving grace that he could determine.
Carew was too weak to be effective as medical superintendent. He was all right for opening hospital fetes and talking to the ladies' luncheon club but no use against the steam-rollering of people like Thelwell. Crichton seemed to be a good man but, of course, as a pure administrator, he could not involve himself in matters medical. Phillip Morton seemed all right from what little he had said and Jamieson did not envy him his job under Thelwell. Richardson too, seemed a good man. Jamieson admired the way he had kept his temper under extreme provocation from Thelwell but was forced to wonder whether or not it was a case of real self control or perhaps a lack of stomach for a fight due to advancing years. Clive Evans seemed competent, loyal to Richardson and keen to help in any way he could. What was more, he was waiting downstairs.
Jamieson followed Evans along a narrow lane between signs pointing to the skin clinic in one direction and the hospital laundry in the other. He was hoping for a modern microbiology department but when Evans took a left turn down some stone steps he feared the worst and was duly rewarded. The Microbiology Department at Kerr Memorial was located on the ground floor and in the basement of one of the oldest buildings in the hospital.
'Dr Richardson's office is just along here,' said Evans, still leading the way. A girl technician at Specimen Reception looked up as Jamieson passed and smiled. Jamieson smiled back. Smiles were important when you were on your own. They were reassuring, like the sight of a navigational buoy to a mariner in strange oceans.
Jamieson felt claustrophobia closing in on him as they progressed along a long corridor between rows of small laboratories, each scarcely big enough to warrant the term, 'room'. They were correctly, little more than cubicles. The corridor narrowed in places to almost less that the width of a human body where lack of space had forced refrigerators and other large items of equipment out into the hallway.
Although Richardson's room was bigger and had a large window, Jamieson could see that it would never receive enough daylight to warrant turning off the artificial lighting. The building across the way was less that five feet away.
'I've arranged for you to have a room downstairs,' said Richardson. 'It's not much I'm afraid but as you see we are a bit cramped.
'I'm sure it will be fine,' said Jamieson.
'If there's anything you need you only have to ask.'
Clive Evans took off his jacket and donned a white lab coat. As he rolled back the cuffs of his shirt sleeves Jamieson again noticed the red burn marks on the back of his wrist and asked him about them.
'Oh it's absolutely nothing,' insisted Evans, 'No problem at all.'
'What happened?' asked Richardson.
'Dr Evans burned himself while helping me escape electrocution yesterday,' Jamieson explained.
'Really?' exclaimed Richardson, obviously concerned at his colleague's injury. 'Have you seen about it Clive?' he asked. 'Maybe you should have a dressing on that.' He leaned forward to examine it more closely but Evans again insisted that it was nothing and pulled down his sleeve. He turned to Jamieson and said, 'If you like I'll show you around the lab.'
Jamieson followed Evans round the cubicles of the first floor while Evans explained what happened in each of them then he led the way downstairs to the cold, fluorescent light of the basement and a long low room. 'This is the Preparation Room,' he said. 'All our glassware and equipment is cleaned and sterilised here.
Jamieson noted the three women working at large stainless steel sinks and noted the steam steriliser that was currently on an operating cycle. A relay clicked to allow more steam to enter and maintain its temperature.
'As you see, we have one large autoclave, working on the hospital's direct steam supply. We use that to sterilise all specimens once we've finished with them. In addition we have three hot air ovens and several small pressure cookers for individuals to use if they have to sterilise something in a hurry.
'Do you sterilise anything for other wards or departments?' Jamieson asked.
'No. All general sterilising is done down in the central facility at CSSD.'
'I see,' said Jamieson. He noticed that the sweat was running off the women as they worked at their sinks and looked up at the ceiling for an extractor fan.
